After Bill

Bill the Hurricane has passed our coast and passed from Hurricane into Tropical Storm status; that is, he has passed on and is gone from here. What we have now is strong northwesterlies that are rushing in to fill the gap that Bill’s centre of low pressure left behind. He was, as the man from Beyond the Fringe said, “not quite the conflagration we expected”, and we were glad for that. There was plenty of rain and plenty of wind and plenty of shaking of trees, but there was no shaking of our house and no debris flying around the property; in fact, the staging sections and ladders, the deck furniture, the plywood and scrap lumber were all lying exactly where I stowed them yesterday in anticipation of Bill.

So what was it like? This morning the waves hitting the shore at Sailor’s Point were unremarkable, nothing more than the usual good southeast gale, but down on Ferguson’s Cove Road the water was way up around Andrew’s wharf, even though it was still more than an hour until high tide, and John and Lesley’s lane was almost under water well ahead of the forecast storm surge. Bill did kick up some fuss, and our clumps of maples certainly thrashed their branches around, but nothing broke off and the torrential rain didn’t last long. The storm surge seemed not to amount to much and the gusts became less intense. While the large swells were crashing across Mauger’s Beach behind the lighthouse, the wind came around to the north and then northeast, and the whitecaps came straight across the harbour towards us, a sure sign that Bill’s centre had moved past.

Soon the wind shifted to northwest and the sky cleared a little. When we went back out to Sailor’s Point there were cars parked all up and down the road, and it was easy to see why. Bill had moved on but he had left behind huge swells that roared in from the open ocean and crashed on the rocks. There was something a little exotic about these giant rollers that came from way offshore where a huge depression called Bill had been stirring them up. Farther out on the shoal water just offshore they reared up and crested with the sharp wind blowing back plumes of spray so that they looked like white horses with flying white manes rushing in. People were standing everywhere, all looking seaward. Some held up their cameras and phones, but all were watching wave after wave. Out on the horizon spray flew upward in mysterious white blooms, and we all stood and watched.

Tonight Venus is bright in the eastern sky, the white blooms are still intact on our hydrangea, and there is a roar still coming in the window from the waves across the harbour. But Bill has gone, and we are OK. Tomorrow everyone goes back to their ordinary work, but they will all be talking. They’ll talk about Bill, what happened or didn’t happen and what he was or wasn’t, while Bill’s ragged remnants cross Newfoundland and end up in a couple of days lashing the coast of Ireland with whatever strength he has left.

Hurricane Bill -- the calm before

There’s a storm coming. Its name is Bill. I call it Kill Bill, but I’m hoping it won’t be a killer storm. It is a hurricane right now, a Category Three, but forecasters suggest it could move back up the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale to a Four tomorrow. I hope it doesn’t. You can check out this site to see what the hurricane categories mean and what kind of damage can be expected (for example, if you live in a mobile home built before 1994, you are in trouble in any one of the categories).

We moved to Istanbul in August, 2003. In September of that year Hurricane Juan made landfall in Halifax and caused very extensive damage. We missed it but our house survived the storm without damage. From here you can see areas of dead trees over on McNab’s Island even now six years later, and Point Pleasant Park still shows signs of serious devastation; in fact, the wildfire that threatened our house at the end of April fed on the debris of dead trees from Juan. The thing that is particularly worrisome as Bill approaches is that Juan caused all the damage it did six years ago as a Category One hurricane, way down the scale from Bill's current status.

Today we took down the stage we have been using for painting the house and stacked it carefully on the ground. The sheets of plywood that have been protecting the deck are now safely stowed in the sheltered area next to the shed. Tomorrow, the day before Bill is expected to arrive, we will move the barbecue and all the deck furniture somewhere safe, away from windows and railings and anything else they could fly into and damage. We are in the process of battening down.

Today there was a light wind out of the south. The fogbank hung just beyond McNab’s all morning and began to drift in the harbour in the afternoon. Waves started breaking on the beach by the lighthouse, the first white water I’ve noticed over there in more than a week. Surf reports predict waves up to 3 metres on Saturday and 6 metres on Sunday, a sure sign of something coming even with hardly a breath of wind -- yet. And there seemed to be a lot of boats coming in the harbour, presumably looking for shelter from the storm.

I don’t know if we would have known a storm was coming if we hadn’t been checking the forecast and news reports over the last couple of days; that is, were there signs and portents that we would have noticed, or did we notice these things only because we knew Bill was tracking towards us? Whatever the answer, we feel that we can feel the storm coming, and we feel the need to get ready. Tomorrow we will fill the water containers and check that we have fuel and the Coleman works. We will locate the battery radio, candles, and matches. We will pick up anything around the house capable of becoming a projectile. And we will keep watching how Bill is tracking (here is a good source of information) and wait to see what happens.

My hope is that the colder water off our shore damps down this hurricane’s energy enough to lower its status a couple of categories or that it tracks far enough from here to limit us to a good gale from its edges. We will find out what Bill is up to (or down to) in a day or so, but we do know we will get a storm on Sunday and its name is Bill. We will try to be ready and we will be waiting.

Celebration of Leonard Cohen

Last week Leonard Cohen performed two concerts in Istanbul, the first time that he has played there. Earlier in the summer Loreena McKennitt also played Istanbul, one more great Canadian performer (with, of course, Hugh Marsh in her ensemble), so we have been well represented musically there this year – just need Neil and Joni, I guess, to complete that picture. You can read some interesting accounts of Leonard’s performances in the reviews and reactions listed by Dr. Guy in his blog here. They seem to have been good concerts, much appreciated by the Istanbul audiences, one of which included my good friend Ann and her daughter Çağla, who went for the best seats. There’s a nice view of “Hallelujah” here -- I hope that Ann and Çağla saw and heard as well as that.

I was quite familiar with Leonard’s work back in the 60’s, initially from the poems his teacher/mentor Irving Layton selected for the 1962 anthology of Canadian love poetry, Love Where the Nights are Long (still worth the price of admission!). I had my own copy of The Spice-Box of Earth, the one that had a cutout window in the paper cover showing Leonard’s picture inside, as did Lorraine when we first got together a few years later. Leonard’s poems were important to all of us young lovers and romantics as we tried to figure out who and how we were. Read “The Cuckold’s Song” to see why. Or this:

Song

I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater

and how I kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I’d
never been your lover

We all read Beautiful Losers and talked endlessly about Catherine and that great mantra “God is alive; magic is afoot”. Leonard was present in our lives, even though, as Warren T pointed out, he didn’t have the rhythmic or verbal complexity of Bob (he meant Mr. D but it could also have been our other hero Creeley); Warren was right, of course, but for us Leonard was still cool.

When we heard in 1967 that Leonard was coming to UBC to do a reading, we were all going. When we got into the lecture theatre, we waited. Leonard was not sitting down front to be introduced like at most readings – he wasn’t in the hall at all. We waited. When he came out from the wings, he was carrying a guitar -- no book, no sheaves of paper – just a guitar, and that small smile you will recognize if you ever saw him perform. He began with “Suzanne” and he owned us.

Later in the old caff we sat around tables while he told us that it was his birthday, his 33rd, and that he was happy to be in Vancouver, and he reminded us of the fact that Jesus was crucified in his 33rd year. He pointed out that such a thing was not part of his own plan, though he certainly toys with such ideas in “Dress Rehearsal Rag”, which we all knew from the copy of Judy Collins’ “In my Life” I was given for my birthday that year. The next year up in Sechelt Jon F. played and sang Cohen songs beatifically at our campfires on the beach at Sergeant’s Bay, etching songs like “Sisters of Mercy” and “One of Us Cannot Be Wrong” into my consciousness forever.

I have followed Leonard’s work over the years but haven’t been to a concert since that first one back at UBC. I’m glad he is doing them and glad that Ann and Çağla got to go to one last week. After all he is still, at close to 75, very cool and always worth a listen.

Four People

Yesterday afternoon at the airport we said our departure words to four of the best people we know as they headed back to their home in Istanbul after three weeks here with us and with our children and grandchildren. The words were not good-byes or farewells -- though our hope always is that they will “fare well” in their travels and in their daily doings, both of those terms carry too much feeling of finality for me to use them comfortably. I might prefer “Au revoir” or “Adieu”, but neither is a term that sits easily, and “See you” or “Görüşürüz” are just too casual for this occasion. It was a parting, a leave-taking, the beginning of a time away from each other until we see them again, either here or there, when we can greet them again and resume the happiness of the times we spend together. And our words were the words for people you truly care about and truly wish they did not have to leave

These four people are K&A, the parents, and their three-year old twins, A&Ö, and they were heading off on a 15-hour stint in the zone of air travel to get from Halifax to Istanbul, from our home to their home. Our place this morning is quiet. We were woken by the sun in our window rather than by the voice of a twin initiating his morning conversation. There is no more Thomas the Train layout in the living room and no “white window car”, the big Buick SUV they rented, sitting in the driveway. There is in our house the absence of their presence.

There are many gifts and benefits from our five years in Istanbul, which was a wonderfully life-changing period for us, but the best and most significant was our meeting and coming to know these four people there. K., who is Turkish, is about the closest colleague I have ever had and a truly excellent friend, one of those rare people you are fortunate to encounter and to come to know. His wife, A., who is American, is a truly gifted teacher and parent and a privilege to have as both a colleague and friend. And their boys, A and Ö, whom we have known practically since their conception, are now fluently bilingual and wonderful young beings, our good friends, able and inquisitive and truly loving. These four people are worth knowing and they are missed.

They have visited, and they have returned as they should to their own lives in Istanbul. They are there now and they should be sleeping. “Fare thee well”, I say to them -- we are thinking of them as we explore the now empty spaces of our house, resume some of the patterns of our ordinary life, and speculate on when we will next see them and hang out together again. They are four people who matter.

PEI Vacation

We have just returned from a week on PEI at John B’s Waterfront Cottages on Tracadie Bay with our two sons and their delightful young families and our dear close friends from Istanbul, K&A, with their equally dear and close three year-old boys. It was one of those vacation times that was magical, because of the outstanding people -- five children under five and six young adults all in their thirties -- we spent our time with, because of the fine weather, and because of the beautiful setting.

Here are a few impressions:

• brilliant green of beach grass
• dark red sand
• clear warm water that fills the bay
• boats out in the channel running from the wharf to the mussel lines and back
• voices of small children
• a heron circling slowly and moving on
• the shape of sand dunes on Blooming Point and the sea’s horizon beyond
• young eagle in early morning circling just above the cabins
• blue sky white clouds
• kids in crocs, sun hats
• icy freshwater spring bubbling up down the beach
• a couple of 24 hands and T. pegging 12 in an evening of cribbage with our two sons
• blown bubbles that floated from the steps over the beach and the bay
• a colony of sandcastles around a constructed inlet, driftwood bridges
• bare feet
• reading to a child on your lap
• one of the ospreys diving and disappearing, then lifting off with a fish, shaking itself, and flying to the nest calling
• glass of crisp cold pinot grigio
• rain in the night on the cottage roof
• conversations, explorations
• terns calling and diving out in the channel
• sun’s set
• small starfish and tiny yellow snails as you snorkel over the eel grass
• dinner together with the ones you love, laughter
• herons in the morning or evening, standing, or gliding on long curved wings to the next spot
• the games of young children on the beach, under lawn chairs, in the cottages
• finding rocks to skip across the calm water
• going to bed, getting up, knowing that there is nothing that you have to do
• everyone shouting “PEI” with right fists raised

Dead birds

Yesterday Steve, who is working on our house and is consistently the first to arrive in the morning, walked out on our new deck and told me we had had some casualties. I went to look and found two birds, a cedar waxwing and a fox sparrow, lying on the deck near the rail. It wasn’t the first time we have found birds on the deck outside our tall living room windows – in fact, years ago we had some small victims that were stunned only and revived on our safer upper deck to fly away, as well as some that were already dead when we found them – but it was the first time it happened since we moved back into our house almost a year ago.

Steve said he couldn’t figure out how the two birds got killed and we both wondered whether the glass panels in our new railings and not the windows had been the cause. It could be that they both had flown down from the shad that grows next to the deck and crashed into the glass, but whatever happened I had two small and beautiful birds lying on the deck first thing in the morning.

I have picked up a few dead birds over the years, including a gorgeous yellow-shafted flicker that broke its neck after hitting the car in front of us and, amazingly, a sharp-shinned hawk that was lying on its side on a path through the blueberries at the bottom of our property. What always strikes me in these instances is the birds’ lightness, an almost unbearable lightness, you might say, of their hollow bones and the slight bodies under their ruffles of feathers. There is always pathos in the grounding of these small and wonderful flying beings.


I photographed the cedar waxwing and looked at it even closer than the camera can show. I marvelled at the delicate yellow that shifted to a paler shade under the belly and at the compact yellow tips at the ends of the grey tail feathers. The small black mask and black eyes and the swept back crest feathers were also wonderful to see. But most remarkable to me were the bright red waxy spots on the secondaries. They are pretty much impossible (for me, at least) to see on a bird in the wild, but on our kitchen counter I could see and touch these red spots and wonder what in evolutionary development could have given rise to such wonderful touches of colour.

The delicate dead birds are gone, but bird life does go on. I heard today the small lisping trill of waxwings in our shad and watched them pecking at the berries, just as I know they pecked at the blossoms earlier. A cardinal sang from a bare branch high up in one of our maples, crows cavorted on Irene’s roof next door, and the robins scolded me when I walked up the lane. It makes me happy to live with birds around and I’ll hope each day not to find any more small corpses out on our deck. The bird in the hand, after all, is not worth more than the two (or more) in the shad bush.

Sir Paul McCartney comes to Halifax

Last Saturday night Sir Paul McCartney played a concert in Halifax on the Commons. It was the only Canadian stop on his current tour which takes him down the east coast of the US to play six venues, including New York and Boston and ending in Dallas toward the end of August. It’s not a strenuous tour schedule, but I guess if you are Sir Paul you can do it at your own pace. Our next door neighbours, Red and Sharon, bought tickets for the concert, as did our friend Heather, but we decided not to even though Lorraine was President of the Calgary Beatles Fan Club in 1963 and had a special affection for Paul, as he was known to all of us back then.

We didn’t buy tickets, but we were fortunate enough to receive an invitation from Robin to attend his party “Baby let me drive your balcony”, said balcony facing the Commons close to the corner of Cunard and Robie where the stage was set up. We decided to go since, after all, it was an event and a party, and, after all, Lorraine had been President and a big fan, and, after all, I had had a Beatles haircut for a short time in my undergrad years, and, after all, we knew those old songs so well. There was a crowd at Robin’s, both an art crowd (we were part of this group) and a social worker crowd, many of them colleagues and friends of Robin’s partner, plenty of food and drink, and a great view from the balcony of the traffic jamming up, the long tractor trailer support units, two policeman looking elegant on two lovely horses (though Jackie reminded me that they are often used in crowd control, which did put a different spin on the image), the back of the stage, and a sea of people waving and swaying.

The concert was a good one, with a huge crowd and a set list that had enough favourites sprinkled through it to keep everyone we could see in the main audience pretty happy – and it kept us happy enough too. There was a limit of six on Robin’s balcony so people had to do rotations there, but there was no restriction on Robin’s bed which was next to his open window. It gave a great view, so we could watch Paul’s torso from behind through a gap in the backdrop as he moved around on stage – he’s not a dancer like Mick but he does sway some and step back and forth – and the sound was great. Every song was played note for note, pause for pause, syllable for syllable, and harmony for harmony like the originals that were burned in our memories, so Jackie, a social worker I seem to see about once a decade, and I were able to sing along without missing a beat. Her sad story was that her parents had refused to let her attend a Beatles concert in Paris in 1964 with her high school because they were worried what might happen to her, but her happy story was that Sir Paul had built this concert around the Beatles songbook, and now, 45 years later, she could hear him sing almost as he would have sung back then with John, George, and Ringo.

One crowd favourite with a local flavour was the Celtic ballad “Mull of Kintyre”, which you can watch here, a great version complete with our own pipe and drum band, the 78th Highlanders. An easy one for Sir Paul was “Hey Jude” because he got the audience to do most of the singing, which they didn’t mind at all. And “Yesterday” was rendered with the same aching nostalgia it has always evoked, which did not stop any of us from singing along. Jackie and I agreed that “Helter Skelter” simply felt wrong without John (though I've since learned that the song is all Paul), and we talked seriously – Jackie is an old “leftie” – about class analysis, honouring blues roots and people of colour (not many in the audience we could see), and the fact that Sergeant Pepper’s was played as a straight thank you and good-bye at the end, with not a hint of the irony of the original.

Our political commentary was halted at one point by an amazing fireworks display, which put the whole thing into concert spectacle context as we all stared out the window and said, Oh wow! It was a time, as people say around here, a fine time, and we all shared something, some recollection of a Beatles time or place, that made it worth going for. Thanks for that, Sir Paul.

One day of summer

The day before yesterday was the first warm day we have had in June or July, and it wasn’t even that warm. The northerly flow of drier air has pushed the fog offshore, and the skies are a clear blue, but the forecast still said, the way it often does in summer here, High 25 except 19 along the coast. The morning was still and cool and the harbour completely flat and there was promise for the day, but anyone who lives along this coast knows about the afternoon wind, the southwesterly that comes up as the land heats up and the warm air rises over the land and the cooler ocean air has to rush in to fill the gap. It turns the bays and harbours a deeper blue and flecks them with whitecaps and darkening gusts that scud across the water. And it keeps the warm days cool, often cooler than you want them to be.

While it was still morning, before the wind came up too much, I drove to my mother’s so I could do some banking for her. Then I took her out for a drive, the first time she had been out for about two weeks, because she had had a bad cough and was worried about pneumonia, and she hung her white cardigan over the edge of her walker. I told her she probably wouldn’t need it, and she didn't, since of course this was a summer day, our first this season. We ended up at the Point Pleasant Park look off, in a Handicapped zone because she always keeps her little sign handy to hang on the mirror. The harbour was blue, the day was warm, she had some of my ice cream cone (caramel apple crunch, a “new flavour” at Pinky’s), and we watched people with their animals and a few boats sailing. By the time I took her back so she could get her lunch the wind had come up some more but it still wasn’t too cold.

In the afternoon Lorraine and I drove to see my brother and his wife in East Chester. My brother and I decided to go out in their sea kayak even though the wind was high and waves were roaring across the bay from Big Tancook and breaking against the remains of the old wharf. After we came out from the cove, the waves hit us and the bow of the kayak sometimes crashed hard coming down off one of them and sometimes water came rushing over the bow and pooled around my sprayskirt. What struck me, happily, was how warm the water was. I hadn’t expected this, especially after the weeks of fog and cloud and rain, but my brother pointed out, which I had forgotten, that it didn’t get very cold at night during that time. The other factor, of course, was that the afternoon wind was blowing the surface water, which was warmer and lighter, into Mahone Bay and into the cove. So after we went out to the end of Graves Island, and he saw two dolphins but I didn’t, we carefully turned the kayak, rolling around on the edges of the waves, and surfed our way back to the cove. We hauled the kayak and I told him I’d like to swim. So we did, and it was almost warm, a real delight. We checked the debris brought in by the wind, mostly seaweed and kelp and jellyfish, one a beautiful grape-coloured specimen that flowed over the edges of my hand, and then carefully picked our way through the breaking waves and up the rocky beach.

Over dinner we all joked about this day being summer, and now that it was ending we were glad we had been able to enjoy it, because tomorrow we would move into fall, or into more of that indeterminate season of fog, rain showers, 100% humidity, and highs of 17 (if we were lucky). However, we were wrong, and the next day, yesterday, was in fact the second day of our summer, high hot sun in a blue blue sky. As for today, it was neither here nor there, but our fingers are crossed and our swim bag is packed because there is a small hope that the weather pattern may have finally changed and the magical season of summer may stay. If it does, we’ll be ready and waiting!

Places to walk by the shore

Two are pre-eminent.
They are Sailor’s Point and Chebucto Head.
Both have large granite bedrock that slopes down to the sea.
The meeting of the sea and the rock has always drawn me.
I can watch and listen for hours.
Higher up lichens grow in grey or charcoal flakes on the rough surfaces.
Near the water the rocks are bare.

Things grow wherever they can.
There are pockets of black soil
and pools of dark water.
Blue flags bloom here in wet places.
Tiny cranberry flowers remind me of wild cyclamen
first noticed on the acropolis at Olimpos,
swept back petals, the flowers both delicate and brave.
A small boggy area near the lighthouse is festooned with pitcher plants.
Harebells grow between rocks.
The alder bush held down by winter winds spreads out along the ground.
No trees grow in these barrens.
The dog rose fills a sheltered spot, gentle scent.
Blueberry, huckleberry, bayberry line the paths.

You walk on rocks
or on patches of granular gravel.
There is a horizon, a line so sharp tonight it feels unreal.
The sea is moving slowly.
It slurps and bulges and sometimes crashes.
The air is clean and clear.
One buoy sends its faint hoot,
another clangs in the gentle swell.
You walk and watch.
You breathe.
And you listen.
Sailor’s Point and Chebucto Head.

Me and Canada Day

Today is Thursday, the day after Canada Day, the 142nd birthday of this country. On Tuesday, the day before Canada Day, our local CBC station ran a story about a man who has been a landed immigrant in Canada even longer than I have. As I remember from the news account, he landed in Canada some time in the spring of 1946, probably at the Pier 21 Immigration Shed (now an Immigration Museum), the same one I arrived in about a year later. He was the son of a Canadian serviceman and his Scottish war bride, and, like me, he always thought he was Canadian – a citizen of Canada, that is – until he applied for a passport and found he wasn’t.

I landed at Pier 21 on March 16, 1947 and my card indicates “ADMITTED NON-IMMIGRANT"; a month later my parents received a card dated April 15, 1947 that said “LANDED IMMIGRANT”, and that is the status I have had ever since. I believe that the man on the news has applied for his citizenship. By my reckoning he should have had it long ago since his dad was a Canadian, but perhaps he didn’t ever apply for it. My situation is a little different. It is my mother who was and is Canadian, as were her mother and maternal grandmother, and I couldn't inherit her citizenship because I was born before 1949 when that law changed. My father was British, though he himself became a Canadian some time after immigrating, and I travel on a British passport, since Bermuda, where I was born, no longer issues its own passports. Last October, after sixty-two years as a landed immigrant of Canada, I decided I should make my association with this country more permanent and official and I applied to become a Canadian citizen.

So, I am looking forward to being a real Canadian and will certainly post an account of that occasion here when it does occur (the CBC story talked about a 12 to 14 month processing period for applications, so it may not be soon!). However, I did my best to celebrate my adopted country’s birthday yesterday. I went for my first Canadian outdoor swim yesterday afternoon at Caribou Park Beach, even though the wind was pretty fierce out of the north, the air temperature was about 18 degrees, and the water felt about the same. I ate, with my Canadian wife and Canadian friends, a large and fine bowl of lobster bisque (lobsters landed at the Caribou government wharf on an inlet of Northumberland Strait) made with Canadian Carnation milk. I toasted, albeit with an Italian pinot grigio, the joys of my adopted country and thanked these fine Canadians for sharing their celebration with me. I joined them for a very Canadian driftwood bonfire on their beach and applauded the small but spectacular fireworks display. And I slept in my MEC sleeping bag, soundly and proudly Canadian.

So, Happy Canada Day – may there be many more – and maybe next July 1st I will sing O Canada, our home and native land, (you can listen here) as a legitimate citizen of this large and mostly fine young country!